A few years ago, my friend Chip got a mid-afternoon call from his wife. She had come home to find that their cat, Skitty, had been run over and killed in front of their house.

It wasn’t a pretty crime scene. She needed Chip to leave work and come home to take care of cleaning things up and giving Skitty a proper burial.

Sometimes a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.

So Chip got in his car and headed to the scene of the carnage. On the way home, he took a few moments to remember the good times with Skitty. I mean, Skitty was family. Seeing to her proper burial was the least he could do.

When he arrived, it was worse than he imagined. But he got to work. A shovel, a sheet and a few buckets of water. Then to the backyard. Digging the grave, Chip carefully placed Skitty into her final resting place. A brief ceremony and then a cold beer to help wash away the whole tragic event.

Later that night, Skitty came home.

Yeah, that happened. Chip got called home to bury an unknown but vaguely identical cat.

Yep, sometimes a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. And then there’s me.

I recently got a call from Berneice to come home — quickly. There was a familiar edge to her voice. The one she gets when there’s an issue she would rather not confront. The one she gets when she sees a snake. In the house.

My wife is an incredibly independent woman. Strong and capable of handling any disaster that comes her way. Except snakes.

There are a dozen screws in her shoulder because a few years ago, on the St. Marks Trail, a huge snake darted in front of her bike and she ended up taking flight over the handlebars. Berneice doesn’t like snakes. I’m also on the list of snake haters.

When I got the snake call, I thought about Chip and Skitty. His uncommon bravery. And the fact that he literally had no choice.

I suggested to Berneice that she keep an eye on the snake so we wouldn’t lose it. I would be home in about 20 minutes.

After fracturing a series of local traffic laws, I got home to find her perched on a bar stool in a staring contest with the beast. She had not blinked for 20 minutes. The snake was coiled along the baseboard in our kitchen, staring back at her.

I know this would be a good time to reveal the size of the snake. The larger the snake, the more intriguing the story. And I know there will be those who will judge us if the size of the snake was such that a normal person would not have gone to pieces.

Size really shouldn’t be the issue here. But let’s just say the beast was not what most people would call large. As I approached the snake with a broom, it smelled my terror and quickly scurried behind the refrigerator.

This is the size of the snake he actually saw. (No stunt animals were harmed in the making of this column.)(Photo: MykolaIvashchenko/Getty Images/iStockphoto)

I stepped back to consider my options. Berneice grabbed the broom and started banging on our formerly un-dented stainless steel fridge with the butt-end. Her ill-considered plan was designed to use noise to drive the snake out. That failed. But we will always have five deep indentations in the fridge to remind us to think through a plan in advance.

Inch by inch, we finally wedged the fridge out of its wooden frame. And there was the beast, coiled in the corner.

I threw a clear storage container over the varmint and, dragging it along the hardwood floor, managed to get it to the front door. I flipped the container, ran down the steps and threw the snake in the direction of our neighbors', Terry and Linda’s, house. Hey, any port in a storm.

So here’s to Chip and Terry and all the other men who are thrust into danger, because sometimes a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. Even when what a man’s gotta do is slightly over 12 inches long.

Gary Yordon is a host of the political WCTV program “The Usual Suspects” and president of The Zachary Group. Contact him at gary@zprgroup.com.